“Improving community planning in Scotland”
Item 2 is a report from the Auditor General for Scotland and the Accounts Commission called “Improving community planning in Scotland”. To introduce the report, we have Caroline Gardner, who is the Auditor General; John Baillie, who is the chair of the Accounts Commission; and Antony Clark, who is the assistant director for best value, scrutiny and improvement at Audit Scotland. Welcome, everyone. The Auditor General will make a few introductory remarks.
As the committee knows, community planning is the process by which councils and other public bodies work together with communities, businesses and voluntary groups to plan and deliver better services and to improve the lives of people in Scotland. It was given a statutory basis by the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003.
We have identified 21 recommendations in our report, but the agenda for improvement can be grouped under three main headings. The first group is on leadership and impact. In other words, it is about ensuring that community planning is seen as a shared enterprise across the public sector, and that the people who are in key leadership positions have the skills and confidence to lead and drive the improvements that are needed.
Given that it is 10 years since CPPs were given a statutory basis, the report seems to be quite damning about the impact that they have had. The second paragraph lists four ways in which CPPs should add value, which are:
It seems to me that progress over the past 10 years has not been good. There have been pockets of initiative and of activity being successfully delivered—some of which are listed in our report—but it is fair to say that community planning partnerships as a cohesive and coherent exercise have not been as effective as they should have been. That is a fairly clear outcome.
On the four specific points in paragraph 2 to which the convener drew attention, our view is that CPPs have probably made more progress on the first two than they have on the second two.
Mr Baillie said that there are examples of good practice. Some examples of good partnership working are listed in paragraph 21. Are any of those driven by community planning partnerships or are they driven by other partnerships, for example, alcohol intervention teams?
The point that I was making rather badly was that there have been local initiatives along the lines of the example that the convener cites, but no cohesive performance by community planning partnerships.
Is the framework salvageable at all? There have been recent initiatives to improve the performance of CPPs—for example, the “Community Planning Review—Statement of Ambition”. Is there any chance of turning the framework around?
That would be conditional on strong and sustained leadership in CPPs and across the public sector generally to lead and to drive the exercise: I stress the word “sustained”. There has to be that will. We can achieve most things with will and it is a question of will and of priorities. At the moment the Government is putting a lot of emphasis and initiative into the exercise and if that continues I can see all sorts of things developing in a positive way. I will come back to the role of scrutiny later.
I am trying to get my head round the methodology in the report. It is ostensibly based on three recent audits, but paragraph 7 states:
Yes. There were several joint reports between the Accounts Commission and the Auditor General for Scotland prior to the three audits, which largely confirmed similar findings about an accountability deficit in the community planning partnership as well as the other things that we have covered. To a greater or lesser extent, the three audits confirmed what the earlier work indicated. Perhaps Caroline Gardner wants to add to that.
I was going to ask Antony Clark to give us more information about the three recent partnership audits that were carried out.
You are right that the national report draws on the three local audit reports and the previous audit work that we undertook. We were conscious that there was a risk of generalising about 32 CPPs from three CPP audits, and we were careful to ensure that the national report reflects the evidence that we found in the previous national performance audit reports.
From paragraph 7, it appears that you drew on work from the period 2006 up to the report. It also appears to make it clear that audits of different aspects have thrown up the issues. I do not find much by way of specific reference to the three audits that have just been completed in the report; it is very much a general report. I am a bit uneasy about the period that is referred to and the narrowness of the outcome of the three audits that you have just undertaken.
We have published specific reports on three community planning partnerships. For each CPP—in Aberdeen, North Ayrshire and Scottish Borders—there is a detailed report that contains the evidence base and our findings, so there is a specific and broad evidence base for what we found in respect of Aberdeen, North Ayrshire and Scottish Borders.
Have you seen any indication that the findings have been acted on?
Yes—I think that there is clear evidence of improvement over time. Our initial community planning report indicated that many CPPs were in the early stages of developing their plans, strategies and planning arrangements and our follow-up report demonstrated that much progress had been made on strengthening those planning arrangements.
Are the primary issues really at local level? You have indicated that the Scottish Government is driving matters much more effectively now than was perhaps the case in past years. Is that sufficient, or is local engagement still inadequate and will not rise to that?
I will start; we may all have a bite at answering that question.
I agree with that. Some progress has been made over 10 years, but the report aims to identify the barriers to making community planning the central part of public service reform that the Government envisages its being. Some of those barriers exist at local level and are about the extent to which partners understand their role and are prepared to hold each other to account by challenging each other’s performance, or they may relate to the ability to move resources to deal with agreed priorities. Some of the challenges exist at national level, in that the Government needs to clarify how things such as community planning sit with health and social care integration and other aspects of the reform agenda.
I want to spring to the defence of the community planning partnerships. I do not see the report as a damning report; I see it as a very helpful report at this stage in the life of the community planning partnerships. We have to remember that the process even pre-dates devolution. There were five years of planning right up to when the 2003 act came in. I remember being a member of East Ayrshire Council from 1999 on, when the then 10-year plan came into being. I thought then that it was incredibly challenging, but incredibly worth while.
I am not sure that there was a question there. Do panel members want to respond?
This is, of course, a joint report that has been produced with the Auditor General. I do not disagree with the general thrust of what Willie Coffey said. What we are saying is that so far there have been lots of isolated incidences of work being done enthusiastically and sometimes inspirationally, but the collective picture is that there is a long way to go, and that to get there we need all the things that we suggest, such as strong leadership. I will not belabour that.
The other thing that is different is the scale of the financial challenge that faces public services. We know that we will for the foreseeable future have very tight financial resources in Scotland. Community planning is seen by the Government as being a key part of that and a key way of shifting to prevention, from responding to problems. In order to achieve that, the recommendations that we have made really need to be put into effect locally by the 32 CPPs and by the Government and the other national bodies that are involved.
Communities will need some help with how we measure things and how we know whether we are making a difference. It would be very helpful if it was possible for the Accounts Commission or Audit Scotland to offer some kind of template—as the Auditor General does in many of her reports—for the CPPs about how to articulate and gather evidence and to form a view as to whether things are being improved.
I could not agree more. As you know, all three parties have been banging on about performance measurement and performance information for many years. Just as councils have now moved to a wider, deeper and more consistent benchmarking project, I can see great scope for something similar in CPPs. As ever, the difficulty with benchmarking is in measuring outcomes and effectiveness properly. Some of those are very soft things to measure.
When the committee discussed the previous report on the role of CPPs in economic development, a lot of our focus and attention fell on the role of location directors. I know that the minister has written to local government on that, but has that role been clarified and have the staff turnover issues in that respect been addressed?
Guidance has been issued to location directors in recognition of the good deal of variation in how they have been carrying out their roles. I am not sure that we know how the guidance is being put into effect, whether we are seeing more consistency in the role, whether that consistency is in line with the guidance or whether the staff turnover issue has settled down. Antony Clark will pick up that question, then John Baillie will comment.
I do not think that we have evidence on turnover rates for location directors, but it is obviously a challenge, given how much Scottish Government people move around. As Caroline Gardner has pointed out, location directors have received clearer messages on the important role that they can and should play as a bridge between CPPs and the Scottish Government.
It is fair to say that the Scottish Government has recognised the very important role that location directors can play. I sense that more attention is being given to ensuring consistent performance and that location directors are giving a more consistent message to CPPs, but time will tell.
Given that a lot of the responsibility in CPPs seems to lie with the local authority, and given the location director’s key role in redressing that balance, scrutinising the partners around the table and encouraging scrutiny between partners, it would be good if the Government could maintain that pressure.
I agree. I cannot stress enough the importance of self-evaluation in the boardroom, and of anything that helps to achieve that and consistent measurement across the 32 CPPs. The location directors have a key role to play in that.
The location directors’ other key role is in ensuring that the bridge that they act as works in both directions. They should not only be looking at the partnership’s operation but should be feeding back to Government the things that it does that might be getting in the way of, or could help, progress. For example, they could examine the consistency of different policy directions to ensure that they are joined up and pointing the same way. Again, that brings us back to the clear expectation that the Government has now set for the location directors, but how well the role is being played is an issue that we would like to keep an eye on and in which the committee might have an interest.
I really hope that I have a question at the end of this, but I feel the need to make a few comments. Having sat for four or five years on a local government committee that analysed single outcome agreements, frameworks and so on, I have been through all this before.
That is definitely a question.
I got there in the end.
That is a very good question. It is about the ability to reconcile national priorities with local ones and give those due weight. As we know, most of the bodies within the CPP do their own work locally to engage with local people and find out their needs, so plenty of local needs are being identified. Part of the question is what part the CPP plays in dealing with those local needs. Is there an additional factor, or an issue that is not covered, that should be injected into the CPP plan? That is a basic question about CPPs that I have always had, along with everyone here. What is the X factor? What do CPPs add that individual bodies do not, and how is that measured? Those are complex issues.
It is a great question, but there is no single answer. One of the bonuses of the statement of ambition is that it reflects the positive dialogue between the Scottish Government and the 32 CPPs, via COSLA, about what those national priorities ought to be. There is a focus on the issues that were identified by the Christie commission and the Government’s response, which gives us that line of sight. What becomes trickier are the real questions such as what matters to a community and how it might want to tackle its problems and be engaged in the process of solving them. We hear jargon such as “community assets”, but how we let the community both contribute to solving problems and build its own resilience in doing that is a really good question. The forthcoming community empowerment and renewal bill will be a key part of the answer.
Governments and local authorities need to let go of control a little. That started to happen with single outcome agreements when we looked at frameworks that had a whole raft of aspirations within them. Local authorities were asked to select the ones that most suited their local needs and implement those in a way that best fitted them, so there was a great deal of flexibility and ring fencing was lifted to a huge degree.
I can answer the question in a non-accountant way. We are optimistic that in future years we will get a better handle on the resources that partners are directing towards their agreed priorities. The report is critical of the extent to which CPPs understand how much of their mainstream resources or dedicated joint funding resources are directed to agreed priorities. There is a real sense that CPPs recognise that they must get better at that and want to ensure that their new SOAs are much clearer about their priorities and the resources—people, buildings and money—that are directed towards them. In future audits, we want to check whether CPPs are making progress in that area and also to form some harder-edged judgments about whether CPPs deliver value for money, which was difficult for us to do in the three early audits.
Does the report seek to estimate how much money was spent in local communities following that sort of process compared with the overall spend? I suspect that we might find that it is a tiny percentage of the overall spend. If we compare that between the 32 local authority areas, we might be able to identify where the good and weak practice is. Has any of that been done in the report?
In the local reports, we looked at the money that CPPs were confident was being directed towards partnership working and agreed local outcomes. That tended to be through specific funding streams that were made available from the Scottish Government such as change funds and so on. There were some other projects that were jointly funded. The financial information that was available through the CPPs was very partial, largely because of the point that I made earlier that CPPs are very much in the early stages of aligning their service planning with their financial planning. They must get a lot better in that area.
As the report says, one of the sources of evidence is the three early audits that we carried out jointly in Aberdeen, North Ayrshire and the Scottish Borders. We are now in the process of evaluating those and considering how we can develop that approach to cover the whole of Scotland. One thing that we would like to pick up is the balance of national, local and community-based priorities and how that reflects the way in which money, staff and other resources are used on the ground. That is where priorities become real. We do not see much of that in the report, but it is something that community planning partnerships must focus on in the future.
The question that goes to the core of what we are trying to do is whether CPPs bring anything that individual partners do not. If CPPs do not bring anything significant, why are we bothering? That is the core of the matter, and if such things cannot be measured, identified and seen, that would be a significant problem. We hope that, as time goes on and things become more obvious to us, it will become easier to spot them using the right measurements.
Some of my questions have been touched on by my colleague Bob Doris. I am interested in the Auditor General’s comments about the cosy relationship between some of the partners. I noticed the same thing when I was a local councillor. There was a mix of silo working plus cosy relationships, which did not seem to benefit the people whom the partners were there to benefit in the first place.
I will kick off on that question and I will then pass it over to my colleagues. You are right. I did not use the word “cosy”, but we think that one of the problems is that the focus has been on the need to build relationships, trust and confidence rather than on the ability to challenge people when they are not fulfilling their commitments, performing to meet their agreed targets or putting resources into the pot. We point to the shared and agreed outcomes, which—as you say—is what this is all about.
Several paragraphs in the report summarise our judgment on the extent to which CPPs can demonstrate effective community engagement, which largely echoes what Caroline Gardner said earlier. We see many examples of individual partners and CPPs carrying out effective consultation. Most of the CPPs would probably argue that the single outcome agreements broadly reflect the issues that matter to local people, such as crime, education, the need to improve health and so on.
You mentioned a couple of examples of best practice. Are there any such examples relating to relationships that could be spread out further? Every CPP has different priorities and needs, but surely there must be something, almost like a template, to inform engagement with the different partners and the local community.
There is already a raft of good practice relating to community consultation and engagement, but one of the challenges is that people do not necessarily follow it. One of the improvement agenda items that we set out in the report concerns the need for community planning partnerships to work as a collective community and get better at sharing and trading with and learning from each other. That seems to us to be an important aspect of the improvement agenda.
First, I should say that community planning is supported by all the parties in the Parliament and it always has been since 1999, so there is nothing party political about it. It is fair to say that we all want it to work.
The bill is part of the answer; I will ask my colleagues to pick up the specifics of the bill and what we know about it so far.
I agree that there is an opportunity for the bill to address some of the issues. An example of that might be a new duty on all partners to work together to achieve better outcomes and allocate resources better. The issue is how to achieve that—if it can be achieved—in legislation. I cannot answer that question but, happily, I might at least be able to pose the question.
You have conveniently brought me to my second point, which relates to paragraphs 12 and 13. Mr Baillie has said that, too often, everything has seemed to be a priority, which has meant that nothing is a priority. Paragraph 13 states:
I will respond first, and I am sure that my colleagues will also want to contribute. The first step is to determine the extent to which legislation is needed or whether it is needed. As you know better than I do, there are many other ways to achieve the aims. The issue certainly must be addressed. How are such potential anomalies resolved? That might start with Government guidance, but legislation might ultimately be needed.
I wonder if I might briefly explain the Scottish Government’s thinking on the role of the community empowerment and renewal bill and the community planning review. The Scottish Government has been clear that it sees the bill as an opportunity to enact legislation that may support improvements to community planning. Our report is clear that one unintended consequence of the 2003 act was that placing local authorities as the bodies that had to initiate, lead and maintain community planning sent a signal that it is a council thing rather than something that belongs to all partners.
I accept what you say. It is just that there have been quite a few initiatives from the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Government. As I said, we all support community planning, but it is disappointing that progress has not been good.
When the Government of the day introduced the best value duty on councils, the reports that we produced initially were less than complimentary. As word spread that councils were being held to account in a public and direct way, performance started to improve until, when we got to the current stage, councils improved quite significantly. That is what happened through best value. There were all sorts of other things, but nonetheless best value had a contribution to make. In the same way, the very action of having external scrutiny will pass the word round that partners have to up their game.
I do not think that people in the public sector particularly like invitations to this committee, so if we are harsh enough, maybe the situation will continue to improve. That is good, as that is what we are here for.
On your first point about economic development, we picked that area because it was the subject of a specific performance audit in 2011, which looked at the way in which community planning partnerships were contributing to economic development. I cannot say much more about that, because it was before I took up my role, but it was a specific drill-down in that area of importance for Scotland as a whole and for local communities, and we found that there had been little progress.
So it was a general comment that goes wider than the CPPs and that relates to reform in further education, police, fire and so on. It was a general statement that the Scottish Government’s reform development does not seem to be joined up.
The issue is how all those things fit with community planning.
I understand.
The statement of ambition is really clear, and that should be the overarching vehicle. Partnerships tell us that it is not always clear to them how things join up at local level.
Some of my questions have been answered in the responses to Mary Scanlon and James Dornan. There is something interesting that keeps springing up at me, however, and it is anecdotal, from my local authority days. It relates to paragraph 38, which is introduced by the comment:
Perhaps I could start on that, and I am sure that my colleagues will wish to contribute, too. I begin by going back to some of the things that we have already said about the need for clearer priorities. Let us take a local plan, but call it an action plan, rather than a local plan. The first questions are to establish what we are trying to do and what our priorities are. We should limit them, but ensure that everybody round the table agrees with them.
To add to John Baillie’s answer, I return to the accountability and performance management arrangements for all the partners round the table. We recognise that a health board and its chief executive have informal accountability to a community planning partnership for the commitments that they have made on what matters to a community, such as health inequalities and any number of things.
It is all very well for us to look for legislation but, as someone said earlier, if the present legislation is up to speed, our problem is that people are so into their own organisations that it is difficult for them to agree on how they wish to act. We are getting a little close to other committees’ remits, but that brings in the accountability point.
What is needed is a culture change as much as anything. I hate that term, but a different way of thinking is needed.
We make the point in the report that, although community planning has tended to be seen as a local authority-driven exercise, that is changing. When we did the audit work, the evidence was that community planning was being seen as much more of a shared enterprise, partly because the statement of ambition made it clear that people wanted that and because clearer signals were being sent to other parts of the public sector about the important role that it can and should play in community planning.
I remember that, in years gone by, the word “secrecy” was used quite a lot. However, having spoken to some local authority colleagues, I believe that the process is definitely getting better.
If nobody else has questions, I will follow up those points by asking the Accounts Commission, Audit Scotland and the Auditor General about their role in plugging the accountability deficit. You have undertaken the three audits that have been referred to in the report and today’s evidence. What are your plans? I presume that you do not intend to audit every CPP every year, but do you intend to audit more CPPs more frequently, to audit the performance that we have talked about?
The national CPP group will look at our report shortly and will address capacity building—it is doing that already. A big issue in relation to that is governance and accountability.
So that is now part of your regular cycle of performance audits.
That is right.
Where we have got to so far provides a great example of how the public audit arrangements in Scotland can work flexibly to do audits across public bodies. That respects on the one hand local government’s separate democratic place and on the other hand the public money that flows through to all the bodies that are involved.
Thank you very much. We are doing quite well for time and we will take a comfort break.
“Commonwealth Games 2014 Progress report 2: Planning for the delivery of the XXth Games” (Correspondence)
Agenda item 3 is follow-up correspondence to the section 23 report “Commonwealth Games 2014 Progress report 2”. The correspondence followed an issue raised by Mark Griffin. The response was circulated and I note that we will get a further update from the Scottish Government in November 2013.
Yes, I do. I am sorry that I cannot find my paper, but I have so many papers today. From memory, our first question was: from where does the Scottish Government intend to source the additional £37.7 million required to fund the additional security budget? The answer, which was something like, “We will continue to exert cost control, blah blah blah”, did not tell us what we asked for, so I wondered whether we could get clarity on that issue.
Unless I read the correspondence wrongly, it goes on to say that any additional monies will be part of the 2014-15 funding settlement. I could be wrong, but my interpretation was that the Scottish Government will exert cost control and that the remainder will be found from the 2014-15 budget settlement during the normal process.
Does that help at all, Mary?
So we will see the additional budget requirements in next year’s budget. That is mentioned in the next answer.
Yes.
I would have thought that it would have been easier just to have given the answer, but there you are.
I am just showing that I have read my papers.
I read mine, too.
We are most impressed, Mr Doris.
“NHS financial performance 2011-12” (Correspondence)
Agenda item 4 is correspondence from the Scottish Government on the section 23 report “NHS financial performance 2011-12”, following a question raised by Mary Scanlon about capital maintenance backlogs.
The main issue that I asked about was whether the backlog maintenance that we highlighted came from the capital or the revenue budget. The cabinet secretary said in a debate that it came from the capital budget, but I am pleased to see clarification in the third paragraph of the correspondence, which states:
The response also says that some of the backlog maintenance will be dealt with through the non-profit distributing hub project. In my constituency, in a region in my local area, that means two new-build health centres—Woodside health centre and Maryhill health centre—costing many millions of pounds. I am sure that my constituents will be grateful for that new service.
I recall the committee’s discussion about the £1 billion backlog issue. The correspondence with Derek Feeley, which is in paper PA/S4/13/5/5, includes a table that shows that the backlog in the high-risk category is £161 million—that is on the fifth page of our paper. I do not dismiss the importance of the other categorisations, but the extent of the problem is not a £1 billion backlog, as reported widely in the media; it is £161 million, which is about a tenth of that. I also recall that, at the time, it was not clear what assets were earmarked for disposal. That is clearer now, as the correspondence covers that issue, too.
Thank you, Mr Coffey. You have not only read the papers, but added up the sums.
The sums do not add up particularly well. That cannot be explained by the table showing the assets that are held for sale, which is in annex 3. However, although the figures are incorrect, that is to our advantage, in that it lessens the extent of the problem.
The figure of £1 billion is actually in annex 2. I think that it came down to about £0.75 billion, because some of the backlog maintenance related to assets that were fit for disposal. I think that Colin Beattie raised that point.
Do members agree to note the correspondence?
We will now continue in private, so I ask any members of the press or public to leave the room.